Vision

by Lisa Amowitz

Laughing, Aaron plopped a bouquet of wildflowers in Gabe’s lap, a gaudy bundle of yellows, purples, pinks and blues.

  “So pretty,” Bobby said, lifting the flowers to his nose.

  Returning them to Gabe’s lap, he tipped her face up toward him with a finger. A flash of teeth. Her smile.

  “I can see why you love it here,” she said. “Much more peaceful than Madison Square Park.”

  Bobby leaned in to kiss her, the flowers crushed between them.

  “Oooh!” she giggled. “I felt a tug!” She reeled in the rod and yanked it out of the water, pulling out a soggy clump of lake weed. “Yuck. I think we need another worm.”

  Bobby laughed and propped the guitar on his lap. “Forget it for now. Time to give the fish a concert.”

  His fingers slid over the frets, finding their positions. Letting the light, the warmth, the laughter filter into his hands and out through his fingers, he began to strum, the notes falling into place, the words connecting to the moment.

  “Bobby, That’s beautiful. Will you play it tonight?”

  He didn’t answer, just kept playing, weaving the light into song, weaving the moment, Gabe’s smile, the bouquet, his memories of Scratch Lake, and of his mother into a portrait he could keep with him always.

  CHAPTER

  23

  When they got to Mr. Cooper’s house on the other side of town to rehearse for the party that evening, Bobby got out of Gabe’s truck and squinted at the small, white rectangle nestled in a yard filled with flowers.

  “It’s small, isn’t it?” Bobby said as they walked up the path to the front door. “I expected something fancier.”

  “It’s sweet,” Gabe said. “Feels homey.”

  “I guess.”

  Mr. Cooper opened the door, admitting them to the delicious scent of coffee.

  “Hey, there! I’m not much of a chef, but I have some coffee and banana bread.”

  He led them through the dark living room to a brightly lit kitchen gleaming with aluminum appliances.

  “So,” Mr. Cooper said, “pretty short notice to throw a band together, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Bobby said, closing his eyes against the lights. His medicine, he realized, had started to wear off, and he hadn’t brought his glasses. “Pretty crazy.”

  “Bobby, if the lights are bothering you, we can go right into my studio and get started. Aaron, in my den is a big TV; the Wii football game is already set up. You can take Pete in there and knock yourself out. We’ll be downstairs.”

  “The doors are all locked, right?” Bobby asked. He reassured himself that Pete would bark if anyone tried to get in. And they were going to be right downstairs.

  “He’s perfectly safe here. The house is alarmed,” Mr. Cooper said. “I know it’s the country, but my collection of antique instruments is pretty valuable. I wasn’t about to take any chances, being a paranoid city guy at heart.”

  Once in the basement, Bobby was relieved to open his eyes to soothing dimness. Of course, it was nearly impossible to see anything.

  “Wow,” Gabe said, “what an amazing place! These instruments are incredible! Oh, my God, look at this baby grand!”

  Bobby stood a bit stiffly, seeing little more than dim halos of light.

  “Oh, I should have realized,” said Mr. Cooper. He led Bobby to a stool. “Sit right here and I’ll give you a show.”

  One by one, Mr. Cooper placed the strange and exotic instruments in Bobby’s lap, gliding his fingers over the parts, describing their details and countries of origin.

  “This is a sarod, from India,” Mr. Cooper said, describing a small, light, stringed instrument. “I bought it in a Hindustani market after a heated bargaining session. It’s a beauty, with inlaid pearl designs in the body.”

  From across the room, Bobby heard the tinkle of notes as Gabe ran her scales.

  Mr. Cooper laughed. “Your father figured you’d get itchy fingers when you saw that. And for you, Mr. Pendell,” Kenny Cooper said, “I have a special treat. Here.”

  The guitar Mr. Cooper laid in his lap was light and thin. Bobby ran his hands across the sleek surface. “An electric?”

  “Not just any electric guitar. This Stratocaster used to belong to Eric Clapton. The body is painted in a psychedelic rainbow of colors. Go ahead, try it,” he said, handing him a pick.

  Bobby dragged the pick across the strings, astounded by the crystal clarity of the notes. He hadn’t noticed the drum kit off to the side, but after a few strums, the beat joined in, followed by the cascading splendor of Gabe’s piano.

  He closed his eyes and let the music inhabit his soul. They played his songs, improvised songs, old blues songs, old rock songs. Next thing Bobby knew, there was a microphone in front of his face and he was singing, his raspy tenor filling the room.

  They played so long, Bobby lost all track of time.

  “Woohoo!” Gabe said. “You are fucking amazing, Bobby Pendell. In two hours, we’re going to blow the roof off the Graxton Grill.”

  “Wait. In two hours? How long have we been down here? Where’s Mr. Cooper?”

  “He said he needed to make a phone call,” Gabe said.

  “Shit,” Bobby said, rising to his feet. “I should check on Aaron.”

  Bobby stood, the dimness gathering around him in deep pools. He had no idea where the staircase was.

  “Hold on,” Gabe said.

  Upstairs, the bright light brought tears to his eyes. “Aaron? Where are you, scamp?”

  “He’s not in the den,” Gabe said. “Yo, Aaron?” she called. “I don’t think he’s in here. Maybe he’s outside with Pete.”

  “Crap,” Bobby said. “I thought the place had an alarm.”

  There was no sign of Mr. Cooper. And then, Bobby felt it—that strange tugging sensation, calling him toward a long, dark hall.

  “I’ll go look for Aaron outside,” Gabe said. “Wait here.”

  Bobby waited until she’d gone. Sliding his hand along the wall, he followed the elusive thread that tugged him to its source.

  From behind a door, he heard Mr. Cooper speaking in an angry whisper. “Who told you that you could come here tonight, damn it? I told you to call first, to never show up unannounced.”

  The tugging sensation had dissipated, and Bobby was left to wonder if he’d even felt it in the first place. He puzzled over Mr. Cooper’s anger at his mysterious visitor. Bobby didn’t get the chance to hear the response.

  Gabe came to get him. “I found Aaron. He’s in the back yard.”

  “I should wring his neck,” Bobby grumbled. “I told him to stay in the house.”

  “Don’t be so hard on him, big bro; we were the ones who lost track of time.”

  “I guess,” Bobby admitted reluctantly.

  “He’s a happy kid, Bobby. Mostly because of you,” Gabe said.

  In Mr. Cooper’s well-groomed backyard, Aaron chased Pete in and out of the blue shadows that crept in long stripes across the grass.

  Gabe broke suddenly away from him, twirling around in a little-girl pirouette. “We fucking rocked it, Bobby. It was like—it was like fireworks exploding inside my skull, playing with you.”

  He watched her spin, a blur of orange light, a beautiful dancing flame of a girl.

  The shadows had gotten longer, zebra stripes of indigo and deep orange, an abstract portrait of the evening. Bobby tried to dwell on how to scaffold his music with vivid light, how to twine this color into his words. But what words and notes could capture the late-afternoon light in Gabe’s hair?

  She squeezed his hand. “Daddy and I will be here with you all the way. Mr. Cooper, too. You’ve got a whole town watching your back. In fact, I think the whole town is coming out tonight to hear you play. Daddy’s been talking up a storm.”

  He let a finger trail the arc of her cheek. It came away wet. “Don’t,” he said. “Not on account of me.”

  She sniffled and laughed. “Sorry. I promise not to be maudlin. Ever. Kiss me.”

  He was ab
out to lean into a kiss when the tug of something strangled and twisted tiptoed in with the falling dark, this time sharp and clear, unlike the muffled sense he’d had inside the house. Bobby stood stiffly, watchful. “Shit. He’s here.”

  “What?”

  “You remember when I found the bench the homeless guy was murdered on? It’s that feeling I get.”

  “Bobby, I talked to Dr. Constantine about those visions. He says he’s certain they’re a symptom of the tumor.”

  “I can prove to you that he is full of shit. And it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not, Gabe,” he snapped. “Just take Aaron inside. Now.”

  “And leave you out here? It’s getting dark.”

  “I may as well get used to that.”

  After some more discussion, Gabe finally took Aaron back inside the house and left Bobby alone in the falling night.

  Slowly, he found his way by touch and smell, fine-tuning his impressions. No. The killer wasn’t here now. But he’d been here.

  He followed the fence to Mr. Cooper’s stand-alone garage at the end of a long driveway. Foul and thick, the evil clung to the sweet night air. Bobby bumped to a stop at the garage and pressed his hand to the door.

  There was something in there. Some artifact of the murders. He knew it.

  He grabbed the door handle and pulled. The door rolled up, releasing an over-powering sensation of death, like an open furnace door.

  The killer had left something behind.

  The garage was pitch dark. Stepping inside, heart pounding, Bobby fully expected cold hands to close around his throat at any moment.

  Instead, he collided with a vehicle that came up to his waist, his touch revealing four oversized rubber tires and the open top of a streamlined fiberglass chassis. Running his hands across the smooth surface, Bobby concluded it was a very high-end all-terrain vehicle. Probing the seating area, he recoiled. It burned with hideous energy.

  The killer had not only sat in the driver’s seat, he’d driven the vehicle.

  “Boo!” someone shouted as the garage light flared on.

  Bobby clutched his chest, his eyes involuntarily squeezing shut against the sudden pain.

  CHAPTER

  24

  “Haha!” Aaron laughed. “Scared ya, didn’t I?”

  “Don’t ever fucking do that again, Aaron,” Bobby growled, tears stinging his eyes. “It’s no joke.”

  “He’s just getting a little restless, Bobby,” Mr. Cooper said. “We should probably get him over to the Woods’s house.”

  Bobby still felt the murderous vibrations pinging through his fingertips. “Is this thing yours, Mr. Cooper?”

  “That? It’s an all-terrain vehicle. It belongs to my cousin, Carl. He likes to use it when he visits.”

  Eyes still smarting and tearing, Bobby kept them squeezed shut and let Mr. Cooper lead him out of the garage. When he thought it was safe to open them, it was as he expected, the typical aftermath of a lighting overdose. Complete darkness.

  “Has your cousin been to visit Graxton lately?” Bobby asked conversationally as they climbed the stairs to Mr. Cooper’s front door. It had to be Carl who Mr. Cooper had been arguing with.

  Mr. Cooper cleared his throat. “Carl stops by from time to time. We’re each other’s only family, you know? But the visits are never pleasant. Carl is a peculiar fellow.”

  “In what way?” Bobby asked, a chill slithering up his spine.

  “Well, Carl’s never been able to hold down a job. Don’t get me wrong. He’s brilliant. And I guess, with all his money, he doesn’t need one.”

  “So, he’s rich. Does he share any of it with you?”

  Uncharacteristic bitterness crept into Mr. Cooper’s voice. “My aunt made him the executor of her estate. Left her fortune to him. Even though she raised me, she favored her natural children, Carl and Olivia, after all. I get… She left me a small inheritance, which Carl parcels out when the spirit moves him. Which is usually when he needs a favor from me.”

  Bobby’s skin began to crawl. Carl. The name reverberated with a cold resonance.

  “Olivia?”

  “Carl’s older sister. She was so beautiful. A spectacularly brilliant child. A pianist. But she died tragically. It was—” Mr. Cooper’s voice choked off. “She drowned. They said it was an accident, but I—I’m sorry, Bobby. Even after all these years, it’s still hard to talk about.”

  “Where does Carl live?” Bobby blurted, unable to let it go.

  “I’m not sure. Carl is what you might call a recluse. He keeps very much to himself.” Mr. Cooper laughed nervously. “But never mind Carl. We have some music to serve up in a few short hours, and I have to load the car with the sound equipment. Did I tell you? I found us a bass player for the night.”

  “That’s great,” Bobby said absently. But he couldn’t let it go. “Carl’s last name wouldn’t happen to be Galloway, would it?” His heart sped up as the pieces of the puzzle slid neatly into place.

  “How did you know?” For a moment the air went chill. He could sense the tension coiled in Mr. Cooper’s muscles.

  “I, uh, stumbled upon the old abandoned estate by the reservoir when I went hiking with Pete—before my eyes started to go. I was curious, so I found out that it used to be owned by a family named the Galloways. I just took a guess that the estate belonged to Carl’s family.”

  Mr. Cooper sighed, his voice mild. Weary. “Yes,” he said sadly. “I spent a good part of my childhood summers at the Galloway estate. The summer cottage, they called it. But Aunt Regina let it fall to ruin after Olivia died.”

  Bobby swallowed, but it was like trying to choke down sand. Sweat beaded his forehead, his mind racing, remembering the sense of dread he’d felt in Mr. Cooper’s school office—the vision of Dana’s death. Had Carl been there? Had he been watching him all along?

  Bobby was tempted to question Mr. Cooper further, but what was the point? That would only upset him, and to what end? He’d probably find it hard to believe his own cousin was a depraved killer.

  Of this, Bobby had no doubt. Carl Galloway was his man.

  But how to prove it?

  Inside Mr. Cooper’s house, Bobby bristled with frustration. He felt Carl Galloway’s eyes on him, everywhere, coldly watching. Waiting. He could strike at any time.

  And when he did, who would be his target?

  Gabe touched his arm. “You okay, Bobby?”

  He drew her close, hugged her hard.

  It came to him in icy clarity.

  Carl Galloway was making a circle around him. And the circle was getting smaller and tighter.

  One by one, Bobby was certain, Carl Galloway was going to pick off everyone he loved.

  And Bobby, with his eyesight fading fast, was powerless to do a thing about it. All he could do was pray, and try to keep everyone alive until he signed those papers in four days.

  “Gabe,” he whispered, “promise me you’ll stay close. That you’ll believe me when I tell you that I sense danger.”

  “Hey, you’re shaking. Your eyes are glazed. Do you have a fever?”

  “I’m not sick, Gabe. It’s just the tumor progressing. Quickly. At the moment, I can’t see at all.”

  He felt her draw closer, felt her lips touch his. She pressed the white cane into his palm. “You’re going to get through this.”

  He sighed. She didn’t understand. She didn’t get that they were prey. That Carl was watching them, enjoying the game.

  With Aaron and Pete bounding ahead, Bobby scraped the cane along the pavement, Gabe by his side. They were about to pile into her truck when something caused him to stop. On his seat was a clump of soft, cottony hair.

  It didn’t feel like real hair, more like Halloween costume hair. The terror emanating from it sent a zing of warning through his bones.

  “How did that get in here?” Gabe asked. “What the hell is it?”

  “It’s from a wig,” Bobby muttered, fingering the false hair.

  He didn’t need
to see it to know that it was colored the same acid-bright, neon-red that had poked from under the killer’s ski mask in his vision. He stood, probing the air for signs, but the killer was long gone.

  A few minutes later, the lights of the Graxton Grill swam out from the darkness, a glowing gold puddle in an indigo sea. Color and form had come shimmering back, but with less clarity and tone. His world was flattening rapidly, objects sorting into useless patterns of dark and light.

  Inside the restaurant, Bobby was met by the roar of voices, laughter, and clinking glasses. People touched his arm, murmured greetings, clapped him on the back. It was all a blur, the crowd and tables and chairs melting and stirring into a swirl of shapes and tones.

  Blinking, he flipped open the cane and slid it back and forth along the floor. Gabe had gotten his medicine, so the lights didn’t bother him so much. He swallowed down the lump in his throat, scanning his inner map of the room, probing for dark energies, evil watching from the shadows. He sensed nothing.

  “We’re going to be setting up in the front corner, by the windows,” Gabe said. “Mr. Cooper’s already here.”

  “Good.” Bobby cringed. They were falling into a pattern. Already, she knew to fill him in on what he couldn’t see for himself. How long was she going to want to stick around to be his guide dog?

  More people milled around them in shifting waves, thumping Bobby on the back. Gabe herded him to a booth. He slid into the seat, relieved to be safe from the faceless mash-up of bodies, but his heart wouldn’t slow. The faint sense of the killer permeated the room, floated in on every voice.

  “What time are we going to play?”

  Suddenly, he couldn’t wait to feel the steel strings beneath his fingers, to close himself off in a cocoon of sound.

  Gabe squeezed his hand. “Soon. After we eat.”

  Tongue-tied and unable to make sense of his surroundings, Bobby felt his focus burrow through the insubstantial blobs until it flashed with warning, sharply aware that Carl had been there, skulking in the back alleys. The sense of him was clear and painful, like a thin gash in his mind.